RURAL HAZARDS

There are some people in our village, whom I am unlikely to get to know. They have bought a run-down farm, and done it up in a kind of Ponderosa ranch style. However, bad taste is not the reason for our estrangement, it is because they protect their ranch with a pack of extremely fierce and aggressive dogs. I am not a dog expert, but they look a lot like Dobermanns. And act a lot like them as well. It is, for instance, the only house in the village I daren't enter, when I am doing my annual collecting round for the Red Cross; I am afraid of getting eaten. In the early days, before the Ponderosa was completed, the dogs had a nasty habit of escaping, and occasionally turned up in our barn. They only budged when I threw an iron crowbar at them.

The Ponderosa-ites also have cattle. Not cows, but bulls, big heavy beasts that must weigh a tonne or more. They also have a habit of escaping, and also occasionally turn up at our place. Not in the barn but on the front lawn, where they can eat the grass, or munch the flower beds.

One of these incidents took place this morning. I went out to pick up the post, and was confronted by two bulls staring at me from the front drive. Luckily it snowed again yesterday so the lawn is all white again, and there is nothing for a bovine traveller to get its tongue around. So, after snorting at me, they slowly moved on in the search for something else. Which is good, since I don't think a crowbar would have had much effect on two tonnes of cowflesh.

I later discovered that they had wandered though the wood and all over the orchard. This is becoming an intolerable trespass, up with which I shall not put. I must go round and have a word with the Ponderosa-ites. Now, if only I could get past the dogs .......

Walter Blotscher